Colin Kaepernick Drama Shows No Sign Of Taking A Knee

Jena Greene | Contributor

Think you’ve had enough Kaepernick to last you an entire preseason? Think again.

It seems that major sports news outlets have Kaepernick fever. Every move, kneel, and comment he makes gets wall-to-wall coverage. It’s no surprise that the first suggestion when you type Kaepernick’s name into the Google search bar is “Kaepernick situation.”

It is quite the situation.

Yet when Kaepernick’s girlfriend inserted herself into the situation, there seemed to be radio silence coming from the normally Kaepernick-crazed news outlets.

Last night Nessa Diab, the outspoken radio host who also happens to be the player’s girlfriend, tweeted this photo, likening Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave owner and Ravens MVP Ray Lewis to his loving slave.

Am I the only one who finds this story utterly out of control? How did we become a nation that not only loosely throws around references to the brutality of slavery but actually laughs at it too? Have we lost our minds?

Damien Woody should be ashamed of himself and fired immediately. Tweets like this have no place in the 21st century, the NFL, and in the public sphere.

As if this isn’t absurd enough, let’s unpack the backstory riddled with racial tension and misinformed peanut gallery commentary here.

Nessa, as she likes to be called, is angry. Last season, her boyfriend sat on the bench in part because of his decision to kneel during the National Anthem before games. Kaepernick claims his kneeling did more to bring attention to police violence in the U.S. than simple hashtags or chants honoring victims of alleged brutality.

What seems like a long, long time ago (June 16, 2017, to be exact), Kaepernick tweeted out a photo comparing all police to slave catchers, captioning the photo with “A system that perpetually condones the killing of people, without consequence, doesn’t need to be revised, it needs to be dismantled!”

A system that perpetually condones the killing of people, without consequence, doesn’t need to be revised, it needs to be dismantled! pic.twitter.com/BVVPVZIQyD

Dismantled? I’m not an expert but it sounds like he’s calling for anarchy.

Now I’m not condoning police brutality or kneeling during the National Anthem. Both of these things are detrimental the American values we hold so dear. But I’m also not going to stand idly by and watch mainstream sports networks decry NFL teams for distancing themselves from an unpatriotic player. Upset girlfriends are one thing. I’m even okay with opening up the dialogue about the many tensions that face our country nowadays.

However I will not stand for the denigration of our American values. Kneeling for our National Anthem is one thing, demanding to be played despite talent and political fallout is quite another. It is a slippery slope to make casual references to 19th century slavery (I’m looking at you, Nessa and Kaepernick) and to condone it (Woody).

Maybe Kaepernick should just skip the Ravens and take a seat next to Woody at ESPN. I’m sure they’d be great political – I mean sports – commentators.